Shu yanni ‘blog’ bilArabia? (How do you say ‘blog’ in Arabic?)
Today in my conversation class we had to discuss the Internet. For a country that’s had affordable Internet access for less than 5 years (before 2000 Internet access was priced out of the range of most Syrians and was used to some extent by the government), this is an interesting topic. I recently discovered that one of my Syrian friends here, a woman my age, doesn’t have an e-mail address, though she is eager to get one so she can correspond with me when I leave Syria. To me that’s somehow unfathomable that someone in my generation could not have an e-mail address.Internet access in Syria is somewhat restricted; some websites are blocked, seemingly arbitrarily (I can’t access my bank account but I also can’t access my brother’s website). Some free e-mail services, such as yahoo and hotmail, were blocked by the government until just a few years ago because they competed with the e-mail accounts offered by the government. E-mail correspondence can be monitored. None of this was in the topics we were asked to discuss.
My teacher divided our class into groups and asked us to talk about questions such as ‘What do you do on the Internet?’, ‘How many times a week do you go on-line?’,‘What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of the Internet?’ and ‘Do you think the Internet is necessary?’ These are all good questions, but ones I think Americans and a lot of westerners have ceased to really think about, other than the idea of censorship and types of access in libraries and other public places.
When she came around to our group, we were discussing language (with a Barcelonan, Korean, and Finn in my group, this was a lot of fun) so she tried to get us back on topic by asking me how I use the Internet. I struggled to explain what a ‘blog’ is and then ended up saying I have a website and write about myself on it, which just sounds terribly vain.
Because DSL is priced out of the budget of most Syrians, I think the idea of maintaining a blog over dialup isn’t really attractive, so perhaps that's why blogging isn't part of the Internet language here. I enjoy my dialup blog, but it does take a lot of time to upload photos (hence a paucity of them right now). I think I’m going to make this a task for this week, to find out what ‘blog’ is in Arabic.
posted by Travel Chick @ 6:03 PM
2 Comments:
hey anar, i don't know what the word for blog is in arabic, but your post made me think of this blog, which you may or may not already know about, but that you should check out if you haven't already: http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/
he posted all through the lead-up and invasion and continued to post until last year. he has a unique take on thigs, especially as far as western insight into pre/during war period is concerned.
Hi Anar - 'Blog' in Arabic is just like it sounds: 'be' 'lam' 'wow' 'ghein' (or however you write that in Latin characters). Oddly enough, take out the 'wow' and you have the root, 'balagha,' meaning "to reach" or "to arrive." It makes sense. I'm sure it won't be too long before Syrians begin trying to convince you that 'Blog' is actually an Arabic word. - Stephanie
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